In the traditional mode of operation, requesting the scanning of a document located remotely is a very time-consuming, inefficient and error-prone process. Under such traditional mode, a requestor must send a request to the location where the document resides. The recipient and processor of the request (hereafter “scan clerk”) must manually prepare the scanner for operation according to the specifications of the requester including, for example, setting scanner options such as color, resolution, format, number of pages and security password. To make matters more difficult, scanners often have limited user interface capabilities, with minimalistic, button-oriented control panels. Programming a long set of actions using few buttons can be cumbersome and frustrating.
After the document has been scanned into the scanner in the traditional mode, the scan clerk must manually forward the scanned document to each of the designated recipients per the instructions of the requestor. This typically requires, among other things, the manual creation of a cover sheet for each recipient which includes contact information and any other special instructions and the physical sending of the scanned document along with cover sheet to each recipient. Needless to say, the creation of such a cover sheet for and the sending of the scanned document to each recipient is a tedious, time-consuming and error-prone process.
In addition, under the traditional mode of operation, there is no way of automatically notifying the requestor (or others) that the scan order has been processed. If the requestor requires such notification, the scanner clerk must either physically deliver to the requestor a copy of the notification (such notification often consisting of a copy of the scanned document along with the cover sheet time-stamped) to the requester, or draft and send an email to the requestor.
Moreover, under the traditional mode of operation, because the scanners are not linked via a computer network, the requester can send the scan request to only a single scan clerk for processing at a single scanner. If such person and/or scanner is busy, non-functioning or otherwise unavailable, the requester must wait until such resource becomes free and available, even though there may be other scanners and scanner clerks with the capability to process such request within the rest of the company. In short, having scanners which are not linked together on a computer network fails to optimize the use of the available scanning resources since scanning jobs directed to a busy scanner cannot be re-routed to another scanner which is not being utilized.
Given the foregoing, there is a need for an automated, networked, easy-to-use, resource maximizing system and method for scanning documents.